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Benjamin Bluett (1580–1621)

Benjamin Bluett was a member of the governor's Council (1620–1621). Born in Surrey
County, England, he lived in Sussex and worked as a merchant supplying the Virginia colony. In 1620, the
Virginia Company of London
appointed Bluett to the governor's Council and put him in charge of a company of men
working to establish an iron-mining and smelting operation in Virginia. He arrived in
the colony that summer but died soon after, possibly in an attack by Virginia Indians. MORE...

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Bluett was the son of Nicholas Bluett, or
Blewett. His mother's name and the date and place of his birth are unknown, but he
was christened in Horley Parish, Surrey County, England, on April 10, 1580. Bluett
married Johanne Blaker at Cuckfield, Sussex County, England, on July 27, 1601, and
had at least one son, John Bluett, born in Sussex in 1603, and one daughter,
Elizabeth Bluett, born in London in 1605. She was one of the "maydes" who arrived in Virginia on the Buona Nova late in the summer of 1621.

Bluett lived in Sussex and late in the 1610s teamed with David Middleton in supplying
provisions to people who were sailing for the colony of Virginia. Bluett became well
acquainted with members of the Virginia Company of London, such as the Ferrars and
Henry Hastings, fifth earl of Huntingdon. On April 5, 1620, Huntingdon empowered
Bluett and Nicolas Martiau to manage the Virginia land to which Huntingdon was
entitled as a company shareholder. The company also put Bluett in charge of eighty
men who had been sent to Virginia the previous year to establish and operate an
iron-mining and smelting operation. On June 28, 1620, the company appointed Bluett a
member of the Council in Virginia.

Bluett and Martiau arrived in Virginia together
late in the summer of 1620 aboard the Francis Bonaventure.
Bluett probably went directly to the new ironworks on Falling Creek, in what is now
Chesterfield County,
where he died within a few months of his arrival, possibly from wounds received in an
Indian attack. Whether he ever attended a Council meeting in Jamestown is unknown. News of Bluett's death
reached London before May 12, 1621, when the company appointed John Berkeley to take over
the ironworks in the place of "mr. Blewett lately deceased."